Personalized Grit Lab Report

Hi Jing (Sarah),

Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab report!

We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.

We hope this will help you reflect on what you learned and experienced during Grit Lab.

Here's how you started. On week one, after learning the basics of grit:

• You rated your passion as Stage 3: I'm actively figuring out what my interests are by trying one or more of them out in some way

• ...and your perseverance as Stage 4: Other people would tell you that I hold myself to a standard that is higher than what is explicitly asked of me.

Here's a graph:

Then, you learned about goal setting, planning, and deliberate practice.

You established a wish, imagined its associated outcome, identified potential personal obstacles, and then planned accordingly, using implementation intentions.

Did it go according to plan?

And here is how much you learned

In week four, we discussed feedback.

You told us that you felt "Uncomfortable" when receiving negative feedback,

...and "Proud" when recieveing positive feedback.

We then turned to learning about stress.

In week 5, you reported feeling "a moderate amount" of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being uncertainty around the future.

We also talked about adversity and failure.

Although related, adversity and failure are different:

Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.

Perhaps that is why you said that failure had made you feel Disappointed.

However, how we interpret stress and failure matters...

You said that you believe it is false that the effects of stress are negative and should be avoided,

...and that it is true that stress facilitates learning and growth.

Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being and health.

On week six, we talked about mentors

...you said for you, your most important mentor was NA.

Here's how you described him or her:

## Warning: Removed 1 rows containing missing values (geom_point).

You also wrote a gratitude letter to NA. Do you remember what you said and how it made you feel?

On week eight, we talked about interest.

You saw this picture.

You rated it as

6/10 in enjoyment,

4/10 in interestingness, and

4/10 in novelty.

What about Francis Bacon's Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef?

You rated it as

1/10 in enjoyment,

8/10 in interestingness, and

8/10 in novelty.

Prior research has shown that for most people, what is interesting is not necessarily related to what is enjoyable.

We talked about states of extreme interest, or as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi would call it, flow.

You said you had experienced flow when Having interesting conversations with people.

How do you feel when you are Having interesting conversations with people and get into the flow state?

We then transitioned into values.

There, you said you preferred to gain knowledge, have approval from yourself and have a routine.

These responses, in a sense, spoke about what you valued.

You wrote a This I Believe essay, and located it here in Schwartz's value circle:

For strengths, Danny gave us an interesting lecture on the nature of talent.

You defined talent as NA.

You ranked your talents as NA.

You said your personality strength was NA.

We then examined demand and social impact. Here's how you said you cared about salary vs. social impact for your first career move:

We also asked why you worked hard.

You said you disagree to working hard for wanting to help others,

...and you agree with working hard because you enjoy it.

Regarding demand, you said the most serious issues affecting your country were

Inequality (income, discrimination), Safety/security/well-being, Climate change, Lack of education, Lack of economic opportunity and employment, Loss of privacy due to technology, Lack of infrastructure, Poverty, Lack of political freedom/political instability, Government accountability / corruption, Religious conflicts.

Would you like to work towards these?

We then talked about goal hierarchies, which require you to have a top-level goal. How clear is your top-level goal? You said: "Not sure yet".

Over time and with self-reflection, this will get clearer and clearer.

One particular goal you have for the next six months is to Spending quality time with friends and family..

You rated that goal in terms of how much it really represents you. Here’s what you said:

Finally, on the penultimate lecture we looked at paying it forward.

We learned about reciprocity style: givers, takers, and matchers. You also responded to items about prosocial purpose.

Here are your responses to items surveying this:

After all this time, we hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.

Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?

Drumroll please...

Don't worry if the rubric doesn't yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.

In any case, grit is not built in a day...

...so stay passionate and persevering on the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working hard, and paying it forward.

With grit and gratitude,

Angela and the Grit Lab team.